China's Amazing Traffic-Straddling Bus Is Apparently A Scam

Reports from local Chinese media outlets have revealed that the bus isn't even close to being functional and that it will likely never be used on the road.

The internet was recently awed by the promise of incredible new technology that could help solve our traffic problems—engineers in China had reportedly developed an elevated bus that would allow cars to drive underneath it.

The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) was tested on the road in Qinhuangdao City on August 2, gaining enormous media and public interest. However, new reports are stemming from the Chinese media that the entire endeavor is essentially a scam.

According to RT, “the ‘road test’ was nothing more than a publicity stunt and that its sole purpose was to drum up more interest among potential investors for a project that would never actually be created.”

Other problems include the fact that the TEB’s designer’s highest level of education was elementary school, most cars will not be able to fit underneath the bus’s 2.1 meter clearance, and the bus itself violates the height limit for vehicles on Chinese roads.

Car News China also noted that the construction of the TEB was shoddy, built with rubber wheels that run on gutters rather than an actual rail system.

The funding behind it could additionally be illegitimate: the company was potentially “misleading investors and crowdfunding their project illegally,” RT reports.

While an extraordinary idea in theory, it unfortunately appears that we are quite some time away from anything resembling the TEB populating our freeways and alleviating major cities’ traffic crises.